Sunday, July 13, 2014

The shows over

Well, the end of another weekend, and the end of the show.

20 years ago a model railway show tended to be a rail by fire of sorts. 'Somewhere between Otaki and cass' tended to be set up on the Friday night. First was to make sure that everything was actually there Running problems were sorted out, and parts of the layout were built. Saturday and Sunday consisted of running trains while hoping that locos wouldn't die and fixing any arising problems with superglue or a staple gun. Sunday night was a mad pack up and hoping that we had not forgotten anything.
Today with cabbage industries its all rather stress free and almost automated. Roll in, layout gets set up, modeling tables are up, and then sit round watching people assemble their layouts.

The show was held in the standard hall. Note the huge number of lights, which is a surprise (in a good way). School holidays and inclement weather added up to a sizable crowd on both days.

'The NZP modeling center'

That ageless gem 'Kerosine Creek' is on the left, and Kai-iwi on the right. The NZ120 modeling table is front and center.

Now, I had been under the impression that I was going to be tutoring a fellow modeler in making a couple of points. However he turned up with plans for the lower part of the Denniston incline. To cut a long story short, he has now had a fair bit of practice making a variety of track configurations, and I'm lighter by a 10 pack of code 55 rail....

My selected task was to upgrade the track work on Waihao forks. Since I had 'finished' this model back in November 2011, I had not been happy with the guard rails and point blades to the point where I stripped them all back off. And there it sat till this weekend. I started at one end and immediately wondered how I was going to salvage anything. Rails gaped in the wrong place, PCB sleepers not gaped etc. To cap it all off It was all code 40 rail. Now code 55 I can deal with, but code 40 is just below the lower end of what can work with. Its just too fiddly and I struggle to get it to do anything, let alone what I want. At one point I entertained the notion of folding the whole thing up and jamming it into the rubbish bin. However this eventually passed and I was able to sprinkle the turd with glitter to some extent by the end of the day. I don't think it will ever run well, but it is passable.

The rest of the show was a typical procession of punters, some even with good questions. I was not helped by my fellow modelers. A child asked 'how long have you been making this' to which the man in the next seat quipped 'before you were born'. Next time I'll charge him double for my time....

I also purchased the latest scenery development from scenic textures. Big flat areas of varied colour ground foam. $40 for a piece 45 cm by 60 cm which strikes me as good value.

When I first look on it an idea came to me.

A simple method to replicate scrubby NZ bush for my bush tram. If only I had not used the last of my code 40 on Waihao forks.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Under the Head Druff's masterful supervision, over the two days of the show I completed 1.8 metres of ornate trackwork - including triple rail, double track, interwoven track, a Y-point with the blades over half a metre away from the frog, plus two spare point frogs as learning exercises. The tuition was much appreciated. Track-making is much easier than it looks (which perhaps indicates the quality of the teacher). Now I just have to scenic the Denniston Incline and build it into an MMW module.The Druff is also a superb home-brewer, providing us with newly brewed stouts on a par with Boundary Road and better than Guinness. Also much appreciated.